As a Westbrook Board of Education member, I am very supportive of our local public schools and always looking for ways we can improve. Unfortunately, our schools and teachers often have to deal with state mandates that do not help in our mission and have the potential to make things worse. Thankfully, we have a state representative who routinely pushes back against these mandates and understands the value of public education in his district. That person is our State Representative, Devin Carney.

Devin graduated from Old Saybrook schools and understands first-hand the value of a quality education. He serves on the Education Committee and is actively engaged with Lyme-Old Lyme, Old Saybrook, and Westbrook schools. In the legislature, he stopped a state-forced regionalization plan that would have created an enormous new district for several of our towns. He has put forward proposals to properly fund the teachers’ retirement account without adding to our tax burden. He has worked to ensure we are able to have school resource officers. He continues to work with our local superintendents to try to eliminate state-mandated programs that take away from our curricula. These are just some of the ways he has stood up for us.

I know he believes that the best educational tools are provided by the teachers who know our students best, not the politicians in Hartford. A vote for Devin is a vote for great local schools and their ability to educate our kids without unnecessary state involvement.

Christine Kuehlewind

Westbrook